SparkFun Electronics Commentsurn:uuid:214d0e4e-f1b1-d287-ce26-ac5b4c9f82492015-03-31T14:56:59-06:00SparkFun Electronicssgrace on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil Townsgraceurn:uuid:ce989763-f56d-eae9-1dfe-bcf814da14bd2013-06-03T10:33:25-06:00<p>You&rsquo;re too kind, Kamiquasi.</p>
<p>I love teaching about FPGAs to people who have never tried it before. So, yes, when I get on IRC hit me up and I&rsquo;ll teach you FPGAs.</p>supersat on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil Townsupersaturn:uuid:5d333d56-a4ed-dd3f-1131-ede1f78edbae2013-06-02T04:46:02-06:00<p>A potential news post topic: How Sparkfun pre-programs the ATmegas in the Simon SMD kits. I imagine there&rsquo;s some fancy adapter to do it.</p>
<p>Also, it should really be noted that you also need a soldering iron to complete the Simon stencil kit. The LEDs are still PTH.</p>supersat on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil Townsupersaturn:uuid:ad5edd67-73ec-2a41-cfd6-5bfdf69ea4902013-06-02T04:34:01-06:00<p>That FGPA should be FPGA&hellip;</p>RobertC. on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil TownRobertC.urn:uuid:bf019368-5fa4-ba8b-88c5-103783076c972013-06-01T08:48:40-06:00<p>that I&rsquo;m special&hellip;</p>MicroLAN on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil TownMicroLANurn:uuid:0e7783b4-32b0-45f4-a9a9-9ae0320cadd02013-05-31T21:04:40-06:00<p>Altera has been running some classes on their product line as well. They do this once a year or so, in conjunction with Arrow Electronics. This year, they are giving some basic classes for their Cyclone V FPGA&rsquo;s which also include a dual-core ARM CPU in the package. Not sure if there are any more openings but, the classes are $99 and include a Sockit development kit (http://www.altera.com/b/arrow-sockit.html). (nope&ndash;I don&rsquo;t work for Altera or Arrow&ndash;but, I&rsquo;ve been attending these workshops for several years now).</p>MikeGrusin on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil TownMikeGrusinurn:uuid:256253ed-4817-6fe0-5544-9d10f16d018f2013-05-31T16:33:38-06:00<blockquote><p>We’ve got a few products that should ignite some creativity in you. It’s quite the spread.</p></blockquote>
<p>Oh Robert, what would your mother say?</p>JakeR on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil TownJakeRurn:uuid:17d876e6-e044-da89-b0b8-c1ca707ec63b2013-05-31T15:54:45-06:00<p>I learned on a DE-2 (More buttons and stuff) by Altera. We used it with VHDL which is probably what I would recommend, but be warned that the DE-1 and DE-2 have very little support besides the 1000 page manual for the FPGA itself.</p>
<p>If you&rsquo;ve never used an FPGA before it is totally different that a microcontroller. An FPGA is a device which can be programmed to implement logic functions. So you could have it represent a logical AND gate, or in the case of the DE2, 30,000 AND gates. This would be crazy to design with a schematic, though you could do it, so one uses a hardware description language like VHDL or Verilog to design the logic. You can even get enough logic to build a microcontroller in the FPGA which you can program and have it interact with your other logic. It all gets very complicated, but if you are doing something that needs to be very fast or massively parallel you can&rsquo;t beat an FPGA. (Except with an ASIC, but lets not go there)</p>Conrthomas on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil TownConrthomasurn:uuid:e9d551d3-6862-1d5d-ec08-9a5cd634107e2013-05-31T13:42:18-06:00<p>In my intro to digital logic class, we used Altera DE-1 FPGA prototype boards. While I don&rsquo;t like to recommend leaning Verilog, and the Quartus/ModelSim software pretty much sucks, I still learned a ton from it. The board is only a hundred bucks or so and it has 7seg displays and whatnot if this one doesn&rsquo;t have enough built in stuff to work with.</p>MikeGrusin on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil TownMikeGrusinurn:uuid:decae7a0-1943-50a6-9989-4bee8920f1c82013-05-31T10:04:20-06:00<p>Start with the Papilio website (see the link on the product page). They&rsquo;ve done a great job of introducing it gently with some neat projects, and you have complete access to the chip when you&rsquo;re ready to flex your muscles.</p>Kamiquasi on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil TownKamiquasiurn:uuid:92489f57-6fc7-3c01-8d49-872f2bd969242013-05-31T09:43:53-06:00<p>You hop on <a href="https://www.sparkfun.com/pages/irc_faq" rel="nofollow" >IRC</a> and harass <a href="https://www.sparkfun.com/users/88029" rel="nofollow" >sgrace</a>, of course :D</p>
<p>In terms of resources, quite a few books, but perhaps you could start with <a href="http://www.fpga4fun.com/" rel="nofollow" >http://www.fpga4fun.com/</a>. And if you backed the Mojo at a level where you actually get one, try the forums :)</p>crashfrog on New Product Friday: Take Me Down to Stencil Towncrashfrogurn:uuid:4624f9f9-7e18-04f6-05ab-29143477d8d12013-05-31T09:13:36-06:00<p>How do you start using FPGA&rsquo;s? I&rsquo;m super-interested, I even Kickstarted the Mojo, but I&rsquo;m really finding a paucity of tutorials and code examples.</p>